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Re: Is this a true statement about the B24?
"111 were more than enough to close the Air Gap"
Slessor certainly ought to have known but I'd like to know his underlying calculations. Presumably we're talking about round-the-clock operations and so you'd need the serviceability rate achievable in that context; % of strength devoted to training/conversion; estimated attrition per 100 sorties; transit times to and from the gap itself and so on. So given an initial strength of 100, I wonder how many aircraft could have been maintained over the gap on patrol at any given time and how effective that would have been (obviously better than nothing) given the square mileage of ocean concerned and how much of that was visible (to the eye or to radar) from each aircraft at any one time.
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